


Can You Hear Me Singing?

by lemurious



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Gen, Memory Loss, Music, Power of Songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28910688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemurious/pseuds/lemurious
Summary: Sometimes he claimed to be the Eldest, and he was. At least among his kindred. His little cousin in Lórien would have agreed, if only he could have recognized her.Tom Bombadil and the River-daughter. A dark twist of the canon, a twist of memory and songs and sorrow.
Relationships: Tom Bombadil/Goldberry
Comments: 18
Kudos: 45





	Can You Hear Me Singing?

Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow.

He does not care about the color of his boots; they are caked in mud most days anyway, wet from the river, the leather nearly in tatters, but his jacket is always blue. _Has_ _to be_ blue, though he does not remember why. Did the colors use to mean – echoes of memories, pale shadows creeping at the edge of his little world – a knock on the window at night, no trace left outside in the morning.

Blue as it has always been, he thinks. He buttons up his jacket and takes off on his daily rounds across a little kingdom, with air so fresh, colors so bright, honey so sweet he could have stepped right back into the time when the world was young and they all wanted to talk to everyone and everything, even the trees. And sometimes, the trees answered.

Once again he gets inexplicably cross with Old Man Willow, feeling, somewhere deep inside, that this old stump is not only annoyingly cantankerous, but, simply and thoroughly, _boring_. Less than it could be. Less than _should_ befit his conversations, though, again, he could not tell why, and then it slips his mind, and the melody returns, wraps him in a hum and a step and a jolly twist, and he forgets his worries about willows and colors, returns to his wife, the River-Daughter, the one who still awaits him.

She is a daughter of rivers, though the River-woman is her husband’s pure invention, and the love she bears him has twisted the waters round for her. Cut off the straight road to the West, the land of her birth, where she sang and learned and fought alongside her siblings, and watched the sand of pearls run red, and two ages later saw her proud city disappear under the wave, and lost herself in tides and waterfalls, and met her husband on the shore.

When she followed him inland, she did not give him her name, nor sent a word to her makeshift family, knowing that neither of them could bear the wrath of Ossë, nor Ulmo’s understanding smile.

Because by then she had made a choice, of love and madness turned to care and pity.

At first they used to sing together, and captains forgot to steer their ships when they heard a lonely harp piercing through the shuffling melody of the waves and raising them into a storm.

They sang for a year, and an age, and she, having been born of a melody and not of a mother, would have been content to sing for eternity, while his words grew ever harsher, and darker, and more hopeless, and more pained, and more powerful.

Until he composed a song to take away all sorrows, and asked her to sing it back to him in hope that it would make him forget, if only for a moment.

It did.

Abruptly, his song turned into a ditty, simple and silly and mindlessly joyful, repeated until she shooed him out of the house and her tears flooded the Withywindle.

He came back with lilies in his hands.

Ring a ding dillo, he said. 

She could not force herself to shut the gate.

The following day he returned with a new name.

Sometimes he claimed to be the Eldest, and he was. At least among his kindred. His little cousin in Lórien would have agreed, if only he could have recognized her.

His face turned from the clean, sharp lines of ice and marble to a wrinkle of an apple that had lasted through the winter. The frost cut deep, as he sang greeting every spring anew, without a memory of a thousand springs that had come before, mired in blood and war, and sacrifice, and love.

She tried to sing him back into himself, but the words kept getting stuck in her throat as she remembered their lives right before, his darkness, his pain.

Perhaps, it was better, she soothed herself. It was his request after all. Like a sea captain’s plea in the middle of a storm, but this time not to be rescinded as soon as the waves calmed down.

And she was fiercely glad when he did not rush out into the East after four weary travelers had followed him home. When he spun a circle of gold on his finger like it could never hold sway over him, and stayed with her instead.

The Ring could have no power over one who felt no greed nor revenge, neither an urge to rule nor to create. For all desires had left his heart on the heels of the sorrow, after they determinedly sang it – and himself – into oblivion.

Only another few years, she thinks. And then the last ship will leave the Havens, and she will be the only one to guide it back to her home. Will she have anyone to return to, once it is safe again across the Sea?

Will the lord of Rivendell pay them a visit, on his way?

Will her husband remain in the land, calmly and happily slipping to autumn and winter and a tale told around the hearth?

Or will he go back to wandering the shores as the Kinslayer, the Banished, the greatest singer who has ever lived, tall and grim, the sorrow and beauty of his voice piercing the mists, echoing all the way to the Lonely Isle?

She holds her breath as she waits, twisting her golden brooch with sapphire flowers, and makes this moment sear into her memory, indelible, to be stored after all jewels disappear beneath the waves.

Their happiness, strange and twisted, borrowed, cheated and stolen.

Her bright, colorful husband, each morning retracing his little kingdom, each morning finding the world new and fresh and hopeful. Singing of his jacket blue and his boots so yellow.


End file.
